


The (unfinished) Tale of the Three Snow Leopards and the Yeti (a translation from the original feline told by Pirate Jenny the Fierce)

by twistedchick



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 12:24:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17745872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: A story about snow leopards, as told by Pirate Jenny the Fierce, my cat.Originally posted on Dreamwidth.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the reader encounters three young snow leopards and Pirate Jenny the Fierce, their storyteller

Once upon a time, as you humans say, three snow leopards lived in a cave in the Land of High Mountains. They were siblings-of-the-same-litter {NT*}, whose parents had wished them well and sent them on their way when their siblings-of-the-next-litter were born.

_[Jenny resettles herself and fluffs her tail.  
How vague your human-style story beginnings are! How can you tell what is happening without knowing where and when and how? [stretches out a paw to pat me, to indicate that I am being addressed]_

This took place in the time many generations of cats ago, when cats were still looking at the humans who built strange shaped things out of stone and considering whether the rodents living in the area were tasty enough to have to put up with the humans. This was before the Goddess Bastet told humans that cats were to be honored and cared for. Cats went their own way and lived their own adventures, sleeping where they wished, always on the alert for hunters, dogs, or hawks that could pose a danger. This was long before crunchies and treats and food in hard cans, and cats ate birds and little four-legged running rodents, and the occasional small snake _{Live string that plays back}_ if it could be bitten behind the head quickly enough.

 _[She relaxes a little.]_  
But the snow leopards did not live in the land of heat and strange buildings. They had seldom seen humans at all, because there were no groups of humans living in the high mountains. They slept in a nest in a cave, lined with their own fur shed during the warm season, and ran over the rocks and through the rare high meadows, and leaped from one rock to another with their long tails balancing them at every step. They had very thick sleek fur that was the same colors as the shadowed rocks; they had fur on their feet like Simba***, hrrmhrr, _[sound indicating happy memory of one not present]_ so they could walk on ice and not freeze. Their food was rock marmots, birds, rabbits, and the occasional mountain goat, though they didn't catch mountain goats often. And sometimes they found caches of meat hidden in the rocks and ate it, but all three of them sniffed it all over first to make sure it was safe to eat, and pounced on it repeatedly to make sure it was truly dead.

 _What? Of course they had names, but we do not tell our true names to every bird that flies past._   
Haraur was the oldest, by a little while, Rrua was the smallest by a little, and Criaor was not small and both older and younger, but to anyone not themselves they looked alike, sleek moving shadows and light rippling along the mountainside.

As I said, they didn't eat mountain goats too often. Once Criaor caught a small young goat in a meadow, and was about to strike the killing blow with an upraised paw, all claws at the ready, when he saw a huge ram racing toward him, head lowered with spiked horns aimed for tender parts of his anatomy; instead of striking, he dropped the goat and ran as fast as he could until the ram turned away, head held high, to sniff over the uninjured goat and nudge it back to the flock.

Criaor panted, embarrassed. Haraur walked over to sit next to him.

"If you had said you were going there, we could have helped," she told him. The tip of her tail twitched as she watched the goats moving further away, into an area with bits of growing things too short to hide behind.

"Give the ram more targets _[soft tender places that will hurt a long time if spiked]_ to aim at?" Criaor twisted a paw, and stretched it cautiously.

Rrua lay down nearby. "While you distract the ram, we could have gotten the goat and saved you some." She licked a paw contemplatively.

Criaor knew this was true. They had always shared their food equally with one another, whether it was a large mountain hare or a cache of eggs snatched while the bird parents were away. "Maybe next time." He rubbed his nose. "I'm not really hungry right now."

Haraur said nothing, but looked at him steadily out of the corners of her eyes. Rrua got up and moved between them, bumping her shoulder into one and then the other. "C'mon. I know where there are eggs. It's a snack. And there may be a yak over on the next mountain. Want to go see?"

_[Jenny stretches her front legs out, considers her toes, goes into sphynx position a moment and shifts her hips sideways.]_

But not long after that day, when Rrua caught a mountain hare, it squeaked at her, "Don't eat me!"

This was something new. Food, in Rrua's experience, might scream but it seldom talked back. She settled back on her haunches, the hare between her front paws, and said, "Why?"

"Because I know where there's a lot of food you'd like. Better than me. I'm bony, see?"

The hare was, _hmmhmmrrr [actually]_ , plump enough that it had run off-balance, which is why Rrua had caught it so easily. Rrua chuckled. "If you're bony, I'm a marmot. But tell me, what's this about food?" Normally Rrua would simply have eaten first and thought later, but the thin air was turning crisp and wintery, and she remembered last winter's cold and the trouble they'd had staying fed. "Hmmhmm?"

"Down this side, around the next mountain and over the ridge, there's a bridge. And the yeti who lives there keeps a lot of goats, and sheep. Fat ones."

"Sheep? What are sheep?"

"Like goats, but fluffier. But they don't have pointy horns." The hare was trying to back out from between Rrua's paws, as if too bashful to face her. It didn't work but it was amusing to watch.

Rrua snagged one claw in the hare's tail. "And if I find that you're not telling the truth?"

"You can eat me."

"I might do that anyway," Rrua said, just to watch the hare's nose twitch. But it was a sunny day and she'd already had ptarmagan from further down the mountain for a meal. She pulled back the claw. "Get out of here. Wait. What's your name?"

"My name? Why?" This came out as a squeak.

"I don't want to eat the wrong hare if you lied. Wouldn't be right."

"Ah. Oh. Okay. Um. Yeah. MynameisGrayear." And the hare dashed behind a rock and into a tunnel too small for any of the snow leopards to follow....

[End of Part the First]

* Since feline is a language of body movement and attitude as well as vocalization, some of this will be described in order to present the story as closely to the way it was told as possible. It should be understood that some of the words and concepts within this story are not found in English; when these are presented, they will be indicated by {NT}, which means not directly translatable. Words whose direct translations may provide the reader a better understanding of feline are indicated {in brackets}.

** Pirate Jenny the Fierce has had an interest in stories since kittenhood, when she first saw the Big Screen on the wall and watched and listened to movies and tv programs. Her favorite actors are Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, but she is fond of action movies and has been known to keep an eye on nature documentaries and travelogues.

*** Simba the Magnificent, Maine Coon cat, c. 1998-2009, Jenny's older housemate, defender, and friend-of-the-same-food-bowl, hrrmhrr.


	2. Chapter 2

_The next night..._

__

__

_Pirate Jenny jumped up onto the bed, walked up and peered at me. "You don't look like you're getting enough sleep. Are you well?" She nudged my hand, turned around and settled into storytelling position next to my pillow. "As you may recall, there were three snow leopards..._

 

Rrua could not wait to tell her siblings about the yeti. She'd never heard of a yeti, but if it had food for them maybe it was another kind of cat -- though 'yeti' did not seem like a snow leopard name at all, with nothing in it that rumbled or growled. She bounced up the mountainside, and reached the corner where Haraur was chasing a young male antelope _[indescribable throaty sound to indicate extreme four-legs' stupidity*]_ that had just stood there and let Haraur walk up within two bounds and then zigzagged. The antelope, who was looking backward instead of forward, ran into Rrua, stumbled and tripped into her paws. Between the two of them it was dead an instant later, and they settled in to eat. Haraur pushed a haunch aside for Criaor, whenever he should show up.

A while later, as they lay in the late afternoon sun, Haraur said, "Mmmrowr, that was good. Nice catch. I didn't know you were in the area."

"I wasn't," Rrua said. She lay on her back, paws in the air, attempting to catch the tail of a cloud skudding overhead. It didn't matter that it was far up in the air, too far for her to reach, and moving too fast in the wind to pin down; she could still reach up and think about touching it on the tail. If she could put her paw up fast enough, that was like pinning down a flyer* as it launched itself into the air. Chasing clouds in this way was a game their parents had taught them when they were small-siblings-with-parents-who-fed-them. "I was coming to tell you --"

"Tell her what?" Criaor wandered up. "Oh, yum." He settled down immediately with the haunch and began to eat. "Love antelope. Stupid but oh, tasty."

Rrua stretched one paw until her claws were fully extended and stared at them a moment. There was no point in trying to talk while Criaor was eating; he was so loud in his appreciation that he probably startled the yak on the next mountain, not that she was going to go and check; yaks were poor conversationalists at best.**

"What?" Haraur asked. "You came back to tell me what?" She reached over and pushed at Rrua's tail. Rrua raised her head, Haraur raised her paw, with claws carefully sheathed, and the two of them started a slap-fight, with muscle behind it but no real ill will. They tumbled together and rolled into Criaor, who, startled, accidentally whacked them both with what was left of the haunch. Rrua swatted it aside -- it was little more than bones by then -- and pulled him in as well, and the three of them rolled around the meadow.

Haraur pinned Rrua down with one paw on her chest. "You wanted to tell me what?"

"Ye-ti." It was hard for Rrua to catch her breath with her siblings flopped on top of her. "There-sa-ye-ti--"

"What?" Criaor rolled off and picked up his haunch again, turning it over to see if he'd missed anything tasty. "I didn't forget you. I came right back from --"

"Not for-get. Yet." Rrua panted. "Off. me."

Haraur backed off. "I don't get it. You set what?"

Rrua rolled to her feet and drew a deep breath. "THERE'S A YETI BY THE BRIDGE DOWN THE MOUNTAIN."

"You didn't have to yell. I'm right here." Criaor was still gnawing a bone, loudly.

Rrua swatted him without even looking. "And he has a lot of food. Sheep."

"I'm not tired." Criaor stopped snifing the bone and looked puzzled.

"Not sleep, sheep. Go clean your ears." Rrua stretched. "The hare told me the yeti has a lot of sheep. They're like goats but fuzzy. We could eat them."

"What's a yeti?" Haraur asked. She sat up very straight, stretching her neck as far as she could, looking across the hillsides at the mountains, and down into the valley.

Rrua lowered her head and nipped at a scrap that Criaor was ignoring. "I don't know."

"What bridge?" Criaor, bored with his bone, toyed with it between his paws. "Where is it? Did you see it? How far is it?"

"Don't know, don't know, no, don't know." Rrua scratched her ear. "I didn't want to go alone. I don't feel like that much of a grown-up yet."

Haraur chuffed approval. "We'll go after-a-sleep _[tomorrow]_. Did both of you eat enough today?"  
Rrua and Criaor together tackled her like small cubs after a feeding.*** She licked an ear on each of them^ to put them in their place, and together they wandered back to their furry nest in the cave for the night.

To anyone not a snow leopard, the cave looked like a shadow under a rocky overhang, but it was a crack in the mountain that went deep but too narrow for anyone larger than a pika to walk through, and it was too dark even for night sight. Their nest was back from the entrance, a little to one side, made of carefully gathered leaves, their shed fur from last spring, and a few small twigs or dried plants. Haraur had pushed them into the pile after she saw a marmot eating the same kind of plant, on the theory that in the winter maybe the food could come to them. Neither of the others agreed, but they weren't about to say so. Food was food; if it walked up to them in midwinter, that was fine.

They tumbled together onto the nest. Just before falling asleep, Criaor murmured, "If we could get some sheep fuzz, we could add it to the nest."

"Hrrm. Soft. Warmer." Haraur put her tail over her nose.

Rrua dreamed that night of strange four-legs covered in fuzz like what she'd seen on the seeds in a dried seed-pod, fuzz that the slightest wind could pick up and scatter across the meadow. As a cub she'd chased flying fuzz and even caught it sometimes. If the wind blew in the valley, would the fuzzy four-legs blow away, legs tumbled every direction? Maybe that was why the yeti kept them under the bridge, so they wouldn't blow away...

[end of part two]

* In feline, prey animals include chasers (generally small creatures like marmots, pika, hares or other rodents), flyers (birds), and four-legs (any ruminant/herbivore tall enough that a stalking cat would see only legs at eye level.) There are numerous further subcategories, depending on the particular dialect of feline.

** Prey animals in general have a poor reputation for their conversational ability. The smaller ones generally don't say anything intelligible (which is why the talking hare was notable). Defensive larger herbivores vary between single chargers (like the ram) who say, "Go Away!" if they say anything, and larger herbivores like yaks that sometimes crowded in groups near their young, horns out, and either attempt to be the strong, silent types or mutter swear words under their cud chewing. A swearing yak is not to be forgotten, even if a translator is unavailable.

*** translation: Yes, Mom. (sarcasm)

^ Ears are terribly important in feline. They convey status, language, and health. One's ears must always be kept in the best possible condition, and it is a serious insult to try to bite or shred someone's ears. Authority is established by licking someone else's ears. Only a sibling-of-the-same-litter or a mate can tell another feline to wash its ears and have that be taken as polite.


	3. Chapter 3

_Pirate Jenny flicks an ear back and forth as she circles, then settles on, the sweatshirt that lies on the corner of the bed. She kneads it experimentally with one paw, rumbling in her chest. Satisfied, she turns toward me, leans against my shoulder and began to talk quietly. Toby Chaplin flops down on my hipbone on the opposite side, curls around himself and rests his head against me, pretending not to listen ..._

Before dawn, the three snow leopards were out of their cave and moving down across the mountainside.

"Where did you say it was?" Criaor startled a grouse, which startled him, missed his leap and came down where it had been. The grouse flew horizontally, low to the ground, but between two small trees, which threw off his calculations. He let it go and pretended he'd done it on purpose.

_[Jenny pauses and gazes toward me.] Do I have to describe every rock of the mountainside, or can you imagine that it's gray and green, with large rough rocks and small scrappy plants and a few trees, and looks like the moving pictures on the wallbox three sleeps ago?* You can? Very well. [purr of approval]_

"The hare said it was down this side, around the next mountain and over the ridge," Rrua said. She bounced from rock to rock, though considering the steadying ability of her tail it was more like a ripple of muscle and fur flowing over the ground.

"That's a long way." Haraur sniffed. "We should look out for a sleeping cave for the hot time.**"

"Isn't there one near the flat water?" Criaor asked. "Lots of food there."

"Wings." Rrua tried a longer leap. What would it be to have wings and be able to fly?

"Big wings. More than a mouthful."

"If you're quiet enough and don't startle them all. Flying food makes for hungry cats." Haraur's voice sounded so much like their mother's voice, saying her teaching words, that both Criaor and Rrua were silent for a while.

_[Jenny falls silent for a while, purring to herself. Toby turns an ear toward her and raises one eyebrow.***]_

After a breakfast of non-talking mountain hare and a grouse that had not fully awakened, they reached the edge of the flat water, a lake fed by cold springs and glacier melt. Its water tasted refreshing but cooled all the way down. When they looked up after drinking, another snow leopard was coming toward them around the shore. It was a big male, bigger than any of them, with a slightly crumpled ear that gave him a dangerous expression, especially when it was laid back in warning position.

"Who are you? This is my hunting ground." The strange leopard stopped and looked them over, staring straight at them in challenge. He tilted his head, nonplussed. "Do I know you?"

"Chrrrao? Papa?" Haraur's voice rose in question.

"You don't recognize us?" Rrua blinked, surprised.

"Mama always said I'd grow up to look like you." Criaor's voice cracked as he spoke, which made him sound like a cub. He felt embarrassed; he'd thought that wouldn't happen any more now that he was biger.

The big male's ears came forward, and his eyes slid to the side and back to them in clear invitation****. The younger snow leopards moved forward to rub against his head and shoulders, just as they had when they were cubs.

"I thought you three would have separated and taken your own territories by now. What are you still doing together," he rumbled, deep in his chest, as he only did when he was with family.

"We heard there was a yeti, and we want to go see it," Criaor replied.

"A yeti. And how did you find out about the yeti?"

Rrua said, hesitantly, "A mountain hare told me."

"Your food talks to you and you believe it? Chff, chff, chff, times have changed. When I was your age I would have eaten it while it spoke, and it would not have had time to talk of yetis."

"We're eating well," Haraur assured him. "We share."

"You'll never learn to hunt for yourself if you do that." Chrrrao grumbled, and cuffed each of them on the ear in turn. "Seeing a yeti, what nonsense. There are no yetis in this area. They live near the peaks, back behind the shadows of the clouds."

"Have you ever seen one?" Criaor asked, his chin on the ground and his front legs out in submissive/play stance. His ears stung a little; Chrrrao wasn't pulling his punches as he did when they were smaller.

Chrrrao stared at him a moment as if considering whether the questions was a challenge. "Big," he said at last. "Tall. Stands up like a many-skin.***** The color of snow."

"But snow is many colors," Rrua said thoughtfully.

"Yes, it is." Chrrrao shrugged himself to his feet. "Good hunting, you three. Don't let me see you around any more. I've got another litter to take care of." He loped off without looking back.

Haraur rolled over on the pebbly shore. "Could've been worse. Any food over there?" She flipped her tail slowly from one side to the other.

A flock of swans had landed at the other end of the still water, but there were tall plants between them. Rrua and Criaor crept toward them, in the shadows of rocks and behind the trees, and leaped, and brought down two of them. Criaor's broke its neck immediately, but Rrua's catch hit her in the face with the knobs of its wings before she could kill it.

"Great," Rrao muttered to herself, "first my food talks to me and then it gives me a black eye."

But there was enough on the two carcasses to give the three of them a decent-sized meal before their nap, even if some of it meant picking annoying bits of feathers out of their teeth with claws afterward. They drank again, moved on from the lake to a hillside just up from the foot of the next mountain, and found a shallow cave below an overhang on the cliff, where they could rest unseen. The approach to the cave was full of small stones, so that nothing could sneak up on them unheard.

The hot time passed. They woke when a hawk swooped past them to grab a small squeaking rodent, in the late afternoon. After drinking at a stream, they moved in the shadows down the grade toward what looked to be a path cut into the grass by a series of four-legs. It led them along the edge of the scree and, briefly, through a stand of trees until they lay in a place where they could glance over the edge of a cliff to look across the valley.

Before them the valley spread out. The breeze across it, moving toward them, told them of many-skins and their piles of rock in the distance, and the various kinds of four-legs who lived with them, and the fields where the many-skins dug in the ground or did inscrutable things with plants. But all the many-skins were scattered at the other end of the valley, on the far side of the rock slides and the fast-falling streams that cut through the smaller hills closer to the cliff. And on this side of the nearest two gray hills, over a swift-moving narrow stream, a natural bridge stretched -- but stopped, part way across the stream, as if something had sat on the high narrow arch and snapped it in two. Under the bridge's near end gray and brown fuzzy things moved in the green grass, and next to the bridge stood something on two legs that towered over the fuzzy things. It was so tall that it might have been taller than the length of Chrrrao, if he were stretched on the ground with his toes flexed at the ends of his very long legs. It was the color of snow, all the colors of snow, and it turned away from the fuzz to face in their direction. They could not see its eyes, but they were sure it knew they were there.

"The yeti," Rrao breathed.

"It's real," Criaor said. "The food wasn't lying."

Haraur came to her feet. "I'm going down there to talk to him."

"Not alone, you're not." Rrao joined her.

Criaor, still blinking with surprise, was only half a step behind them....

[End of Part the Third]

 

* The nature program on tv three nights ago, which was about wildlife in the Himalayas.

** Snow leopards are most active before and at dawn and from dusk into night; they prefer to rest during midday.

*** Well? That's all? Get on with it.

**** As with all cats, a steady straight-on look is a challenge, while looking at, then away, then back again is an invitation to come closer. The inference is that one trusts the newcomer enough that one need not keep an eye on him at all times.

***** A many-skin is a human, who wraps many layers of cloth (flavorless skin) around itself to stay warm instead of growing thick fur (or feathers) like a sensible mountain creature.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Put down your book and listen to me," Pirate Jenny said, settling nearby. "You're staying up too late. Don't you want to hear more about the snow leopards? Ah, yes. Where was I..."_

They had not quite reached the bridge when the yeti came out from underneath to stand next to it, one forepaw leaning on the stone, with the foreleg bent at an odd angle, as if its elbow were oddly in the midst of its leg. It seemed to touch the clouded sky overhead with its wisp-topped head. Its eyes were the blue of layers of snow crushed to ice within a glacier, and it gazed at the snow leopards with what seemed to be a blank expression. But what expression does a cloud have, Haraur wondered. Indeed, the yeti seemed to be made of something like dense clouds, fraying into wisps at the edges, and it was truly all the shades of color that could be found in snow, from the brightest pale fluff to the dense shadowed gray of midwinter by the rocks.

The yeti's head tilted to one side as it looked at them. Criaor sat down and licked a paw politely. Rrua blinked and sat also, looking aside and then back as if she didn't realize just how dangerous a creature five times her height might be if it wanted to be.

But the yeti didn't smell dangerous to any of them. It didn't smell like a hot-blooded wing or a warm-blooded fourlegs. It didn't even smell like a digger, with that scent of mud and minerals overlaying fur and muscle. Instead, it smelled like the damp wind before a blizzard, like the tinge of snow in the air just before it arrived, when the storm could be seen two mountainsides away. It wasn't a normal smell at all, but it didn't seem to be a threatening one, no more than any storm would threaten them. And even if it did move in a threatening way, they were unconstrained; they could fight, or, if they wished, they could race back across the hillside at an instant.

A small face pushed around the side of the yeti, not very far from the ground. "Hellooo?" The creature looked like it might be a cousin to a goat, but it was covered in thick fluffy brown fur that bounced when it moved. Criaor's eyes widened, as he realized he had no idea how large the creature under all that fur might be.

Haraur nodded her head in greeting. "I am Haraur."

Criaor shoved his shoulder toward Haraur. 'So, you've decided that they're not edible?'

Haraur didn't dignify that with a glance, but flipped the tip of her tail at his rump.

Rrua murmured, under her breath, 'Remember what we were taught: anything that talks to you intelligently shouldn't be eaten unless that's the only food available.'

Criaor settled grumpily on his haunches, and told his stomach not to rumble.

Ignoring this byplay, Haraur continued, "These are my siblings-of-the-same-birthing, Criaor and Rrua." Birthing was a more formal word than litter, she thought.

The goatlike fourlegs took a step out to the side. 'Pleeeesed to meeet you. Weee are Beeeta, Paaathi, Maapa, and Aahtahtaht." Its little voice wavered and stuttered as it spoke, and the last word was said as if it were three little soft coughs, aht-aht-aht. Behind Beeta there were murmurs in soft voices that the snow leopards couldn't distinguish. Then three other heavily furred four-legs hobbled out to peek at them, each of them walking just a little unsteadily, as if their legs hurt -- and so they must have, for none of them stood securely on four legs. Each dragged a limb or stood on one that must have had a badly healed broken bone.

Rrua blinked. "How did you come to be here, if I may ask?"

"Weee fellll," one of the other four-legs said. "It huuurt."

And at that point the yeti turned away from the snow leopards to sit on the ground, with its back to the bridge, and gather the four-legs one by one into its lap, where it rubbed its odd long-fingered forepaws on the hurt legs.

Criaor shifted his weight from one side to the other, curious. Whatever the yeti was doing seemed to help the four-legs feel better. He glanced at his own paws. Was this something he could learn to do for when he pulled a muscle? Or did it require those odd toes that didn't seem to have claws on them?

"Did you all fall at the same time?" Haraur asked, and Rrua shot her a glance of approval. Haraur had always been best at making polite conversation.

"Ohhhhh, nooooo," the shortest four-legs said, though it was far from smallest. It was so wide that it wobbled as it walked. "Weee were apaaart from our floooocks, aaand it raaaaained. Weeee fellll thennn."

Rrua thought back. Had the four-legs been in the little canyon since the spring rains? That seemed to be the story. No wonder the bushes and plants here were well-trimmed. She had not been near this particular canyon at the end of winter, but she remembered the fast-flowing streams that rushed through the valleys and down hillsides, full of snowmelt, tumbling even some of the rocks in their haste.

"Weeee waaaaaant tooo goooooo hoooooome." Beeta nodded her head, setting her feet with certainty even if one of them wobbled. "Weeee waaaaant tooo goooo up-up-up." She nodded her head toward the other side of the canyon, where a rock slide made a slope in what had been a sharp cliff. Between the little rock bridge, which spanned the smallest stream, and the rock slide was another, broader stream, nearly a river*, that even in late summer ran faster and deeper than the one under the broken bridge.

The yeti finished rubbing the last four-legs' leg, and turned where it sat to look at them. Its gaze was steady, as if it were backing up what the four-legs were saying.

"Why can't he help you?" Criaor asked. "He's tall enough to get across the water." Criaor thought about how tall the yeti had stood, and how much leg was folded up as it sat on the ground. It would have a long stride.

The four-legs all shook their heads. "Nooooooooo," they bleated in unison. "Waaaaaater huuuurts hiiiim." And Beeta spoke again, stuttering even harder with emotion, "Weeee waaaaaaant tooo goooo hooooome. Yoooooou help-elp-elp."

Criaor swallowed hard. Rrua, taken aback, turned her head to look at Haraur, whose jaw had dropped open just a little in surprise.

"You want us to help you get across the water?"

All the four-legs nodded, and so did the yeti.

[End of Part the Fourth.]

* Pirate Jenny informed me, upon hearing this read to her, that I had mistranslated 'mmmmhrrrrmmmhrrp' as 'mmmhrrrrrrummmmhrrm', concerning the number and size of streams. I have corrected the mistranslation above as she requested.


	5. Chapter 5

_Pirate Jenny glanced at the leaves falling outside the window and folded her paws a little closer. "Move over, please. I want to be warmer." She snuggled into the blanket and began to speak:_

Haraur coughed and swallowed hard. "We would like to discuss this proposal. Please excuse us." She gathered her siblings with a glance and they followed her around the edge of a large rock behind the crest of the hill, where their discussion could not be seen or heard. It didn't matter what the four-legs thought, but she didn't think any of them wanted to offend the yeti.

Once behind the rock, Criaor flopped down on his back, laughing and waving his paws in the air. "The food wants us to carry it over the water. Did you ever hear anything that stupid?"

Haraur whapped him on the head with a paw. "Only you, little brother. Sit up. This is serious business."

"No, it's not. Are you grass-brained? That's a good few meals down there, and they can't even run away." Criaor stretched, still upside down, and sneezed when Rrua's tail somehow got under his nose. "What?" he demanded, rolling to his feet.

"If you're hungry, go chase those wings over there or that digger down the way." Haraur raised an eyebrow. "That yeti is healing them with its hands. Do you have that power?"

Criaor looked away, but his ears switched back and forth. "No."

"And we don't know what else it can do. Maybe it can call down lightning and thundersnows."*

"Sure, and Maamrrr's going to feed you her own rabbit right now."

The invocation of their mother's name made Haraur scowl at Criaor. "She's busy with the new litter; that's what Chrrrao said." She unsheathed a few claws on her front feet, and made obvious show of licking her wrist in case he hadn't noticed. "The yeti is taking care of the four-legs, and I wouldn't want to be the one to hurt anything the yeti likes." Criaor ignored her. "Are you really so eager to end up as the skin on someone's wall?**

"I'd be pretty." Criaor smirked, stretching his neck. Haraur leaned into him and knocked him over, then held him down with one paw on his breastbone.

"You'd be dead. But you wouldn't be eating as much. Maybe it would work out." Haraur leaned on that paw a little and Criaor groaned, turning his head sideways to see what Rrua would say.

But Rrua had lain down, sideways to him, with her paws folded one on the other, and was considering the pebbles and grass in front of her. "Chrrrao said yetis didn't come around here. And he said he didn't listen to talking food. But the food didn't lie to me when it told me about the yeti, and the four-legs aren't lying now. They want us to help."

"How?" Haraur frowned. "We swim, but we don't swim with our heads high like some of the four-legs. If I tried to carry a fuzzy four-legs the way I would a cub, it would drown."

"Fuzzy as those are, you'd drown too. That thick fur would hold water." Criaor switched his tail, pushed up against the paw holding him down and wiggled out from under Haraur's grip with a sidling motion that was all kitten and none of it graceful.

Rrua looked up at her siblings. "I have some ideas but I have to think more."

Haraur pushed Criaor away, and he rolled over and came back to his feet. "What?"

"I'm still thinking. I'll tell you when I'm done." She looked up at Haraur. "I want to try to help them."

"You do." Haraur gazed at her steadily, but Rrua's ears stayed forward. "All right. And you?"

"Oh, okay. I won't eat them." Criaor shrugged. "But that doesn't mean I won't eat other food meantime."

"Are you willing to help them?" Haraur asked.

"If I can. Without turning into a skin on a wall."

When they came back around the rock and down to where they had been before, the four-legs named Beeta nodded. "Yoooooouuuuuu willllllllll helllllllllp uuuuuuuuusssss."

Haraur nodded politely, looking at them and away and back again, and so did Rrua. Criaor did it as well, once Rrua had tapped him with her tail.

"But we don't know how to do it," Rrua said. "Do you?"

The whole group of fluffy four-legs looked up at the yeti, who still stood by the bridge. "Heeeeee knooooooooows," Beeta said.

"Wonderful," Criaor said under his breath. "We're going to trust our ability to cross water to a creature who can't do it?"

 

[End of Part the Fifth.]

 

* A thundersnow is a phenomenon where snowstorms include lightning and thunder, like thunderstorms; it is generally found at lower altitudes than the mountains where the snow leopards live, and therefore is legendary and mysterious to them.

** A snow leopard proverb, first told to young cubs after snow leopards had encountered many-skins (humans), who tacked leopard skins to the walls of their houses as a warning. Or so the snow leopards understood it.


	6. Chapter 6

_Pirate Jenny jumped up on the bed, turned around three times to sit facing me, and continued:_

As soon as the snow leopards came back over the hill, the yeti came out of the shadow of the bridge and watched them. They stopped at a polite distance.

"We will help you if we can," Haraur said.

Rrua stepped up next to Haraur. "We may want something in return."

Criaor said nothing, but tried to look as if this was normal, being stared at by something five times as tall as he was with eyes the color of compressed ice. A shiver ran down his spine. It was as if he had just come out of the warm nest he'd shared with his siblings into a snowy wind straight down from the peaks. He could not help a shiver.

The four-legs were in a group near the stream, two of them nibbling plants, and two lying down on a hillock. When Beeta saw them, she came to her feet and walked over to them, hesitating a little on her sore leg.

"Yooooou caaaaame baaaaack. Yooooou willlll heeelllllllp?"

Haraur wished she could read the long look that the yeti exchanged with Beeta. It was difficult to think of four-legs as intelligent beings; it was even more difficult to attempt to read expression on a creature that chewed grass. There was something off about the mouth, the eyes were not showing emotion in a way she could understand, and Beeta's physical stance, despite her hurt leg, seemed unexpectedly strong and stable. And what was that going on with the ears? She wished she could see Beeta's tail behind her; that might provide a clue.

"Heeeee tellllllllss meeeeeeee yooouuuuuu waaaaant traaaaaaaade. Traaaaaaaaade whaaaaaaaat?"  
Beeta blinked. "Excuuuuuuuuse meeeeeeeee. I taaaaaalk toooo ooooooothers." She made a sound that had no words in it, to get the other four-legs attention, and they came up to where she was. More sounds could be heard that were not words to the snow leopards.

Rrua listened but the small nudges and bleats made no sense to her. She blinked as a thought came to her: they have their own language. Maybe all four-legs had a language that snow leopards couldn't recognize. This was such a preposterous idea that she had to sit down and lick her paw for a moment for comfort. Did everything have its own language? If everything started to talk, what would she eat?

Paathi, the four-legs with the dark brown fuzz, lifted her head from the group. "Weeee noooot fooood yoooooou."

It took a moment for Haraur to sort out the sentence. "Yes. You are not food for us. We will not eat you."

"Heeeee noooot fooooood."

Haraur's jaw dropped a little. "Of course he is not food. He is yeti. We do not eat yeti."

Paathi's head dropped back into the four-legs discussion, which had not been interrupted by her words.

At this point the yeti, who had appeared to be listening to all of this while staring off into the distance, walked across the flat ground toward a tangle of broken trees and branches, fragments of the greenery that grew further up the mountain before the bare rock. It had broken under the weight of winter snows and had washed downhill in spring freshets and floods. The yeti took hold of a large limb and pulled the limb clear, put it aside and continued to pick through the pile and pull out some pieces while ignoring others.

Criaor watched this, puzzled. The only use he knew for those tangles of dead wood was as a home for small rodents, which could be more easily chased and eaten elsewhere; there were never enough leaves left on the branches to provide shade, and the spiky, broken edges were painful to walk on. Wasn't the yeti scaring the rodents away? Rodents weren't useful for much, anyway; they were barely a snack at the best of times, though they could be tasty.

After a while the yeti stopped pulling out pieces of wood and started moving around the ones it had chosen. It would pick up a long branch and push it under another, or on top of another, or on top of one piece and under a different one. It was confusing to watch ...

 _Pirate Jenny tapped me with her paw. "Remember, these siblings have never seen any human make something by hand. I have seen you pick up yarn and sticks and afterward there are socks. And you and the Bearded One* pick up things-to-eat and add something and take away something and it gets hotter or colder and you eat it. Or you pull on the circle on top of those metal things with your front toes and give me and Toby Chaplin** our food when it gets light. You do things with your front paws all the time. The snow leopards have never seen humans doing these things. They hunt in the mountains, not the valley." She sniffed. "They don't even know that the people who live in rock houses in the valley are humans; they call them many-skins or wraps, because all they see is the clothes._ "

... but eventually the yeti stopped, and stood waiting, as if it expected them to come over to see what had been done. The four-legs, still incomprehensibly discussing something, moved there as a group, followed by the snow leopards.

The yeti stared at Beeta and the other four-legs, but Rrua wasn't certain what was happening. At length she said, "I'm confused. What are the trees doing?"

Beeta nudged the yeti's wooden pile. "Heeee saaaaaays ittt willllll caaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrryyyy uuuuuusss."

Another of the four-legs, who had not spoken before, possibly Maapa, said in a high voice, "Nooooo swiiiiimmmm."

The yeti tilted its head to the side, leaned over and picked up the four-legs and put it down to stand on the pile of wood. The four-legs wobbled but walked around and bounced a little, and the wood held still. Seeing this, the other four-legs climbed up onto the wood and walked around, still muttering to one another.

"Huh?" Haraur didn't realize she had spoken until the yeti turned toward her. "I don't understand."  
She walked around the pile of interlaced branches. It was a little longer than she was, about as wide as two four-legs lying down, and still didn't make sense.

Seeing this, the yeti picked up another piece of wood and held it out, to get their attention, then motioned with its other foreleg to get them to follow it. It went to the stream, hunched down on its back legs, picked up a small rock, put the rock onto the wood and pushed it out into the water. They watched as the wood floated downstream under the bridge, turned around once and drifted over to a sand bar on the other side of the stream.

"You want to float the four-legs over on the wood?" Criaor asked. "What does that have to do with us?"

The yeti waved its forepaw at the rock bridge over the stream, and moved its paws together as if pushing something. It didn't make sense to anyone.

Rrua looked at the pile of branches and the little stream, and then over to the larger creek that divided them from the place where the four-legs wanted to go. "Doesn't that floaty wood thing have to be over there?"

The yeti turned to gaze at her, then looked at the wood pile it had so carefully assembled, and then turned back to survey the creek in the distance. It moved as if it were giving a great sigh, walked over to the wood pile and picked up the four-legs one by one to put them back on the ground. Then it walked over the narrow stone bridge to the other side of the stream and started to collect wood, which it set down on the bank of the far creek.

"I'm hungry," Criaor complained to Rrua. He sat and scratched his ear with a careful claw on his left hind food.

"You're always hungry. But so am I." Rrua huffed to get Haraur's attention. "We want to go get some food. Do you want to come?"

"I'll come later. I want to stay here now and watch what's happening."

Rrua nodded to her, and she and Criaor went back over the crest of the hill toward the pond they had passed, where so many wings walked and swam and clustered together that they were sure to get at least one or two for a meal, if not swans then geese. Rrua hoped for geese; she could still feel the bruises from that swan's blow to her eye.

Haraur went down to the stream to take a drink and then found a soft tuft of grass that had not yet been nibbled much by the four-legs, near the piles of wood. She lay down and watched the yeti collecting wood pieces across the stream, and watched the four-legs eating or talking among themselves. The four-legs that she thought was called Aahtahtaht was eating a plant over near the wood the yeti had moved, and as it walked slowly part of its fuzzy fur tangled in the end of a branch. But Aahtahtaht kept moving, and the fur separated, with a long strand staying on the branch. It waved in the mild breeze that swept down from the mountains and across the water.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Haraur asked.

Aahtahtaht raised her head. "Yoooou speeeeeak tooo meee?" she said in a shy voice.

Haraur pointed toward the loose strand of grayish brown fuzz with her chin. "Doesn't it hurt, losing your fur like that?"

Aahtahtaht glanced back at the branch and shook her head. "Noooooo. Weeeeee uuuuuusssuuuuuulyyyy looooose ittt atttt fffirrrrrstt warrrrrmmm.*** Twoooo-legsss taaaaake."

"The two-legs take your fur?" Haraur could not believe this. "Why?"

"Tooo maaaake ssskiiins, maaaaany thiiiiingss."

"The two-legs make skins from your fur." Haraur wished she had a bone to gnaw on. She always could think well while chewing something. She pulled a stick over to toy with and considered chewing on it but it had no particular smell, so she rolled it between her paws. "Hunh."

The four-legs nodded. "Noooooo huuuurt. Coooooler innn heeeeat tiiiime."

Well, that made sense, she thought. If you didn't climb up the mountains to the higher meadows in the warm seasons it might make a difference to have less fur; it would always grow back.

"Noooowwww toooo heeeeeeavvvyyyy."

"Your fur is too heavy? But it's going to be colder soon."

"Toooo heeeavy. Weeee noooot shhhhed eeenough."**** The four-legs shook her head, and long locks fell over her eyes. "Haaard toooo waaalk. Noooottt goooood."

Haraur waited until Aahtahtaht had gone back toward the other sheep, before getting up and going over to examine the strand of fur. She plucked it off the branch and tasted it -- it smelled like four-legs, but that was no surprise -- and rolled it between her paws. To her surprise, as she rolled it around, it stayed rolled up, sticking to itself and becoming thicker. "Hunh," she said to herself again. It was still light, but it had become more dense, and when she pressed it down it bounced back again.

But as she played with the fur, she realized that Aahtahtaht was right. The four-legs had not been able to shed their fur at the proper time because they were injured when they fell, and could not move enough to rub it off, and since then it had continued to grow. All that fur would hold water if it became wet; it would be heavy. Perhaps that weight was why they'd fallen in the first place, during the spring rains.

"This is getting complicated," Haraur said to herself.

[End of Part the Sixth.]

 

* My husband

** The other cat of the house, a shabby (partly striped) tuxedo cat with handsome cheekbones, a preference for heights, and a hobby of chasing and catching and bringing back fuzzy balls. He is named for Charlie Chaplin because of his tumbling and footwork, but somehow has acquired some of Robert Downey Jr.'s more playful or duplicitous facial expressions, possibly from watching the movie channels late at night.

*** First-warm: springtime. Heat time: summer. Sheep are not often known for their imaginative way with language. Also, a general note on sheep speech: words with much-repeated letters should be understood to be stuttered as if hyphenated when baaed. For example, "You help" would actually sound like "Yoo-oo-oo-oo-ou he-e-e-e-elp." The hyphens have been eliminated to make it more legible.

**** According to authorities on ovine ancestry, primitive breeds of sheep used to shed their wool in the springtime, by rubbing it off on trees, rocks, the ground, or whatever was around, much as musk oxen, wild deer, elk and bison still do. For example, Soay or Hog Island sheep that have been left to live without much human intervention may do this; some shearers have said that there's a weaker layer in the wool near the skin in the springtime that makes it possible to shear them with much less effort than on other breeds.


	7. Chapter 7

When Rrua and Criaor came back over the ridge, Haraur was lying on a hillock between the water and the pile of wood, rolling a grayish-brown fur ball between her front paws. It didn't look like the fur from a snow leopard.

She looked up at them. "Good hunting?"

"There's a goose for you, up behind the rock." Rrua nodded toward the large rock that they had gone behind for their earlier discussion. "It's out of view of the flyers."

Criaor said, "We had a couple for ourselves. They're really slow today." He tilted his head. "What's that?"

"Nothing." Haraur came to her feet. "You keep an eye on things till I get back."

Rrua glanced toward the bridge. Three of the four-legs were nibbling on greenery, and the fourth was lying down with its eyes closed. The yeti was still on the other side of the bridge moving pieces of wood back and forth with the long toes on its forepaws.

"Got it," Criaor said. He flopped down and dozed off almost within a breath.

Rrua glanced at the sky. "You'd better go before some flyer* gets smart."

Haraur nodded and went uphill at a reasonable speed. As the siblings had said, the goose was tucked into a crack in the rock, so that it could be pulled out easily with a claw or two but would be difficult for anyone to see from above. She ate, stretched, rolled on the ground to deal with an itch on her shoulders that she just couldn't quite reach, and walked back over the hill just as the sun was setting.

When she returned, Criaor was still sleeping, but Rrua was playing with the ball of fur, moving it from one paw to another, rolling onto her back to juggle it among all four feet. "This is fun," she said. "Look, you can squish it and it comes back up."

Haraur nodded. "It's the four-legs' fur. Apparently, it comes off sometimes."

"They shed it like this?" Rrua rolled right over. "Are you sure?"

"I think that's what she said. The one that's sleeping, over there."

Rrua tossed the fur ball up in the air again just to watch it fall softly to the grass. "That's really interesting."

The yeti came back across the stone bridge and stood beside it. One of the four-legs who had been eating nudged the one that was asleep, and all of them went over to lie down under the bridge next to the yeti, who sat down under the shelter of the bridge as well.

Beeta put her head around the corner. "Yooooouuu staaaaay?"

"We'll be out here," Haraur said. "Sometimes we get up and move around at night, but we won't go far."

That seemed to satisfy Beeta, who nodded and turned back to close her eyes and tuck her head down on another four-legs' hip.

The air was starting to get a little crisp, but it might have been the dampness from the river, Haraur thought. Nevertheless, she got up and went over to lie down next to where Criaor was curled up, near the fragmented shelter of the wood pile. Rrua followed her, carrying the ball with her, and put it down near where she lay.

"I can't help thinking something's watching us," Haraur whispered to Rrua, as they waited to fall asleep. "If your mountain hare knew they were here, who else knows?"

"That's really not my hare," Rrua grumbled, nudging Haraur with her paw. "We did agree not to eat them, and that's fine -- there's plenty of other food."

"But does that mean we have to protect them?" Haraur asked.

Rrua blinked at the stars, and the slip of a moon that gave the landscape a faint sculpting of light and shadow. "I don't know," she said slowly. "Maybe it depends on who's trying. Maybe you're overthinking this."

"Maybe we need to sleep." Haraur rested her head on her paws and curled to fit herself around the other two.

It was just after sunrise when Haraur heard the movement of feet in the grass and opened her eyes. Beeta was nibbling on the grass a few lengths** away. Beeta raised her head and switched her tail in approval.

"Gooooood yoooooou staaaay."

Haraur stretched and blinked. She gazed across the stream at the distant creek. "I was wondering..."

"Whaaaaat?"

"When you and the others fell, back in the first-warm time, how did you get over here?"

"Ahhhh." Beeta turned to face across the gorge and gestured with her chin as she spoke. "Weeee fellll in waaaater. Heeee saaaaave ussss."

"But wouldn't that have put you over there on the other side of the bridge?"

Beeta shook her ears. "Waaaaater thiiiiiissssss wiiiiiiiide. Toooo heeeere." She trotted toward the sandy edge of the stream and stopped about a length away. "Aaaaalll waaaaater." She came back up to the grass, a few pawlengths higher.

"The yeti rescued you? You said last-light*** that being in water hurt him."

"Yessss". Beeta sounded sad. "Heeeeee isssss smaaaaaaaaler. Nooot dooooo aaagaaaaain."

Haraur sat up and scratched her ear. "He shrank?"

"Waaaassshhhed aaaawaaaay."

"You mean he was bigger before?" Criaor asked from behind her, awe in his voice.

"Ohhhhh yeeesss. Liiike aaanoootherrr himmm."

"Taller?" Criaor swallowed hard. "Bigger at the top? Not the head, I mean."

Beeta nodded vigorously. "Biiiiger. Taaaaller. Heee waaaalk iiiin waaaaaterrr, caaaarry uuuuss ooouttt. Heeee geeet smaaaaallller eeeeeach tiiiiime."

The sun was above the peaks now. By common consent, the three siblings dashed off to the pond, caught ducks, ate breakfast and came back down as quickly as possible. In the meantime the yeti had pulled some of the wood out of his construction and laid it down over the rocks in the stream, to make a low walking bridge that the injured four-legs could cross without having to climb the steep slope of the rock bridge. The four-legs crossed easily, followed by Haraur and Rrua.

Criaor tried to jump the stream and made it to the other side but overbalanced and dropped his tail in the water, which he thought ruined his style. He stopped to lick it dry, then dashed to catch up with the others, but stopped short on the bank, mesmerized by the rush of the water. This was not a belly-deep ripple like the stream under the stone bridge, but a quick-moving flow that rushed around rocks and had to be six or eight lengths across. Where it was narrower, it seemed to flow faster, but even the shallower areas did not look friendly.

How were they going to do this?

[End of Part the Seventh]

* In this case, flyers are predatory birds like hawks, eagles and vultures, that are all too happy to take over someone else's conveniently abandoned kill rather than hunt for themselves.

** In horseracing, races are described as being won or lost by the length of a nose, a head, a neck or a length, that last being the length of a running horse. In this case, a length is the distance from a snow leopard's nose to the tip of its tail, which might range from 7 to 8 feet or even longer.

*** Yesterday


	8. Chapter 8

_The next night, Pirate Jenny folded her forepaws solemnly and continued:_

Haraur had thought of it as a creek, another stream, but it was a river, wider than she could leap, even at the narrow bend downstream; it looked to be far deeper than she was tall in places.

And they were supposed to help four four-legs across it without actual assistance from the one being large enough to walk through it without drowning. By the thick and furry tail of Haiirao, the First One*, she almost wished she'd listened to Chrrrao.

But this was an adventure, she told herself. We siblings had agreed in cubhood that we would have adventures together, not boring lives like our parents. And Haiirao would have wanted us to have them, she was sure, for the First One's entire life had been an adventure. Heartened by this, she moved forward to sniff at the water. At least it smelled clean, free of any odd stench.

The yeti stood next to the wood he had pushed together. He reached out with one long foreleg and picked up the corner of it, and it lifted but stayed intact.

Aahtahtaht and Beeta stood nearby, watching the yeti's actions carefully, the other four-legs behind them. The yeti turned toward them, motioning with his forepaws, and they leaned closer. The four-legs spoke quietly among themselves.

Beeta turned to the snow leopards. "Yooooouuuu swiiiiimmm?"

Haraur nodded. Rrua said, hesitantly, "I have not swum in anything this fierce."

"We swim in the lakes, sometimes, but not much," Criaor said. "To catch food."

"Yoooouuuuu haaaave biiiig feeeeet. Weeeeee haaaave smaaaaaall feeeet." Beeta walked over to jump up on the wood. "Weeee riiiiiiide heeeeere; yoooooou guiiiiiiide."

Rrua and Criaor spoke at once. "How?"

"Heeeee puuut thiiiis--" Beeta stomped on the wood "-- iiin waaaaateer. Weeeee riiide. Yoooouuu swiiiim, guiiiide woood."

"How are we going to do that? Look," Haraur said. She walked down into a less active section of the river, pushed off and swam a length and came back. "How can we guide that if our heads are barely out of the water? We can't hold something that big with our teeth."

Rrua paced the length of the wood contraption. "If I was on the downstream side of this and it hit me, I'd drown."

"Nooooo goooood." Aahtahtaht said, and she turned back toward the yeti to confer.

Several exchanges later, it was decided that the snow leopards would lean their front legs and chests on the wood and paddle with their back legs, steering with their tails. The yeti put a log with one flat side into the water, and Criaor and Haraur tried leaning on it and paddling. It worked, sort of. The log still drifted downstream, but they could guide it a little; the long tails acted like rudders.

Maybe they could do it.

Haraur cornered Criaor and Rrua. "Any other ideas, say 'em now."

Rrua scratched her ear and slanted her eyes toward the wood. It still looked like a lot of branches and trunks stuck together, but it might float.

Criaor stretched. "Better get it done," he said.

The yeti picked up the interlaced wood and pushed it until most of it was in the water and only a corner was still on land. It floated. The four-legs hopped on and stood there, shivering a little at the motion of the water under their feet. Haraur and Rrua put their front feet on the biggest chunk of wood, a slab-sided piece from a fallen tree that must have sprouted in the time of the First One, and pushed off. Criaor jumped in just downstream of Haraur and pushed against the lower section of the corner to turn it a little; it was just below water, but he could reach it without difficulty while keeping his head up.

They were all right until they were halfway across, where the hardest current curved to throw flotsam up on the sandy strand at the foot of the rockfall. The four-legs were shivering but holding still -- until a heavy branch, carried by that hard current, rammed the side of the float and threw it against a rock, where it stuck and began to break apart.

The four-legs, who had been nervous but willing to try to hold still, were crying and shivering in fear, shifting back and forth, and their movement upset the contraption even more. First Maapa and then Paathi fell off the wood into the current. They struggled to keep their heads above water, and screamed in terror.

What was left of the float turned against the rock, swiveling, switching around as if trying to pin the snow leopards under water. Criaor abruptly pushed away from the float to swim after the floating four-legs, racing to get further downstream than they were before they could be washed away. He managed to grab one by catching the fur on the back of its neck in his teeth, and the other threw one and then the other foreleg over his back, but it was hard work going against the current and he felt himself being swept downstream. Just before the river curved, he ran against a submerged rock that held him for one long breath, while he gathered his energy until he could kick off with all his strength. That took him past the roughest part of the current, into the smoother water that they had crossed without trouble. He could see the yeti on the riverbank, standing still, its forepaws clutched together.

Haraur was panting with the effort to stay afloat and keep her feet on the wood -- but it was breaking apart, all the wood spinning away in slow motion, and Beeta and Aahtahtaht were caught on two pieces as they drifted. She swam powerfully around the rock and pushed against the wood until Beeta fell across her back, scrambling to stay in place against the force of the water; from the corner of her eye she saw Rrua do the same with the other four-legs.

The wood broke finally against the rock, swept around and came at them. It missed, barely. A snag caught a bit of fur from Aahtahtaht, who lay sprawled across Rrua's long back, and pulled it away, nearly dislodging the four-legs, which wept in fear and pain. Rrua let herself be turned by the water until she felt she was in a weaker current, then struck out with all her might for the shore. The little four-legs lay across her back, trying not to slide off the water-slicked, moving muscles.

Haraur struggled to the shore. Nearly there, she felt herself collapsing -- but something strong and glacier-cold pulled her out of the water, and she and the four-legs fell together on the sandy bank. Criaor, who had come in just downstream, crawled up to lie next to her and lick her face. The two four-legs he'd brought tottered after him, and lay down next to him, nosing each other, sniffing him and the four-legs Haraur had carried.

"Where's Rrua?" Haraur whispered.

Rrua was frightened. The four-legs wasn't moving; she wasn't sure it still lived. She wasn't sure she was going to make it to shore. Even the lesser current by the shore was strong enough to keep her from making headway. She raised her eyes from the water toward the place where she hoped her siblings were and gave one anguished cry.

Then she felt herself being lifted, on something terribly cold, two white-cold strong forefeet pushing her against the current, moving her forward faster than she could make herself go, almost carrying her and her burden out of the water to the shore. But it was getting weaker, less cold, the closer she came, and as she stumbled out of the water and the four-legs dropped from across her shoulders she looked back and saw the yeti. He was coming apart, fragments of his body falling into the water to be carried away, and when he managed to step out of the water he was indeed smaller, curled in on himself as if in pain, and only twice the size of Criaor. He had been badly hurt, but he had rescued them.

The sun burned overhead, so far away. It had seemed, when they were in the water, as if it was taking years, but it must not have taken even half a day.

The yeti sat down hard, almost falling, next to them all where they lay together, snow leopards and four-legs, huddled for warmth after their drenching. He gazed at them with his expressionless blue eyes and they gazed back, without the strength to think or speak. At length he nodded and went to lie in the shadow of the stone bridge, by the rock farthest above the water where the shadows were cold.

Maapa nudged Criaor. "Thaaank yooooou." She licked his fur, and in his exhaustion he let her do it.

Haraur nudged Rrua, who only opened her eyes and looked at her, then closed them again. Aahtahtaht lay next to Rrua, like a cub by its mother.

Beeta rested her chin on Haraur's shoulder. "Heeee mussst goooooo at daaaark."

"Go?" Haraur whispered.

"Heeee willl reeeeeeturrrn."

"Good." Criaor murmured.

They lay together on the shore the rest of the day, until the wind had dried the four-legs' long fur and the sun had warmed the snow leopards' tired muscles. At sunset the four-legs rose and went under the bridge to their usual resting place as the yeti stood up, nodded to them all, and walked away slowly, steadily uphill toward the ice. Without discussion, the snow leopards rose, stretched, followed the four-legs and lay down around them under the bridge.

The next day, nobody said much. The four-legs rested and ate a little grass. Not even Criaor wanted to go back up to the lake to hunt; instead, Criaor and Haraur stood in the shallows like furred tree roots until fish swam by, then flipped the fish to the shore with a turn of a forepaw. Rrua didn't even do that, but she raised her head and ate a fish when Criaor brought her one, and then went back to sleep.

Haraur lay beside the four-legs and her siblings, watching the light of the moon on the rippling water. "Haiirao, do you see us now?" she whispered to the moonlight.

The next day she asked Beeta, "How far did he have to go?"

Beeta switched her ears back and forth and said only, "Heeeee wiiiilllll beeeee baaaaack."

Criaor was getting better at fishing, and Rrua was starting to regain her strength. Haraur was starting to get tired of fish, but she didn't want to go so far away that she would not be able to see the others. She could still feel the strain in her bones and the exhaustion in her muscles from their narrow escape.

And that night the wolves came.

[End of Part the Eighth]

 

* Haiirao, the First One, is known to snow leopards as the greatest of all ancestral snow leopards. Many tales are told to cubs of how Haiirao came to the high mountains from a far land of green trees and plentiful four-legs that nobody has seen, of how on a starless night he leaped from the highest mountain to slash the darkness with one claw to let the light through from the world beyond, and of how, many cold-hot-cold seasons later, after he was a cat of great age and knowledge, he went through that slash but keeps watch over his children through that slash in the sky. Snow leopards call the nearly full moon Haiirao's Eye, and speak to it when they are in need, as one would speak to a much-loved elder relative-of-the-same-clan. And it is said that on the nights when Haiirao's Eye is closed and the sky is dark, a huge silent snow leopard prowls the peaks regardless of the weather, patrolling the First One's territory.


	9. Chapter 9

_A dog barked, over on the next street, and Pirate Jenny huddled into the blanket a little deeper. The last thing she had said, about the wolves, made me wonder what she knew about them; the dogs immediately next door uphill and down include a springer spaniel, a Pomeranian, and some mixed breeds that are no bigger than she is. But she had been in the room when I was watching a tv show about wildlife in Russia that showed wolves. She didn't feel she had to be on the same eye level with them as Toby did (he will jump up to sit on the top of the piano at eye level with whatever's on television, and is particularly fascinated by lions), but she must have watched from the window ledge as the wolves tracked across the screen._

__

__

_She cleared her throat and began. "The next night, the wolves came._

They were mottled gray, the color of shadow on snow between trees, and nearly soundless as they came across the grass, but snow leopard noses can smell a dead four-legs two miles away. Three pairs of pale green-gray eyes snapped open and started to scan the landscape for movement. The moon was half-hidden by high clouds, but shone enough light to make it clear what was about to happen.

"Hsssh," Rrua breathed to the four-legs beside her, and the four-legs stilled and listened, ears forward, breathing so lightly as to seem unmoving.

Just as the night before, they were all clustered under the stone bridge, snow leopards surrounding four-legs. The scent of big cats should have given the wolves pause, but perhaps the dunking they'd gotten in the river had washed away so much of their scent that it was not obvious to them. The scent of the four-legs had only been reduced a little, thanks to their fuzzy fur, and that might have overpowered anything else.

Five wolves, moving together. Their ages and genders didn't matter; they were all nearly the same size, nearly the same color. The pack split, three going to one side of the bridge and two to the other.

Haraur held her breath, though the instinct to growl was strong. She unsheathed her claws and crouched, ready to spring.

The first wolf's narrow muzzle, lips pulled back, came toward her, as if the only creatures under the bridge were four-legs. Haraur slashed with the nearest forepaw, all claws out, and the wolf jerked back, face bleeding, so shocked that it did not even whimper. The second wolf, behind it, darted in, and received the full force of Haraur's strength, a blow that threw it back a length. When it rose again, it cried out with a broken shoulder, unable to do more than limp and back away.

On the other side of the four-legs, Criaor saw no reason to stay quiet. He let a growl rip from his throat, startling the four-legs behind him; he curled his tail back around them to provide as much comfort as he could manage at the moment, and snarled at the wolf that stood just beyond his reach. With half an ear he heard pebbles shift as Rrua came to her feet, putting herself between the water and the four-legs, in case the wolves should circle around that way. When he knew she was set, behind him, he launched himself out at the wolf.

As he fought the one who teased him out from the underbridge, a second wolf leaped down onto his back from the bridge itself. It tried to get a grip on his neck, but Criaor's thick fur was sleek and difficult to grasp. As the wolf tried to maneuver around and reach Criaor's throat, Criaor reared up on his hind legs and kicked out, leaping into the air, and the wolf slid off his back and nearly fell onto the other wolf Criaor had been fighting. While they were stunned Criaor lashed out with his forepaws, one to each of them, and backed up until he was under the bridge again.

The wolves collected in an uncertain mob, one with a broken shoulder, two with serious body slashes, and a fourth with a torn face. Only one remained whole, and that one leaped across the stream, ran under the other side of the bridge and tried to jump into the midst of what it was sure was a delicious huddle of four-legs just waiting to be food.

The wolf landed on Rrua.

Rrua whirled and bit and slashed, but the wolf, surprised, fought hard. It ripped her ear and pulled back, as if it thought she was just another four-legs that it could drag. As it did so, Haraur lashed at it from the side and ripped its belly open. The wolf screamed and fell back into the water clumsily, fell again. The moonlit water ran dark with blood as it flowed away from the bridge.

The other wolves, certain now that they had roused terrifying monsters under the stone bridge, tried to circle back to recover the one in the stream, but the combined screams of the snow leopards warned them off. The wounded wolf under the bridge, confused and in pain, stumbled away as well as it could but in the wrong direction. Bleeding, dazed, dying, it crossed the open space beyond the bridge and fell into the river, where it lost its footing and was swept away by the current. The other wolves ran to follow it, and as the dying wolf floated downstream the others followed along the riverbank and out of sight. The broken-shouldered wolf looked back as it ran, breathing hard, as if it still wanted to know what could have inflicted such damage on its pack.

Rrua stared after the wolves, blood running down her face. When she turned back toward her siblings, Haraur had cleaned her paws and was licking a cut on her side. Criaor was lying next to Beeta, stretched out to allow her to lick the place on the back of his neck that he couldn't reach where the wolf had managed to get through all the fur to skin.

Aahtahtaht approached Rrua. "Leeeett meeeee heeelllp, pllleeeese." But she stayed back, for Rrua's hackles were still raised and her head was down. Slowly, Rrua's hackles fell and she lay back down. Aahtahtaht walked carefully over, nuzzled Rrua's chin, put out a small tongue and cleaned Rrua's torn ear, trying to push the loose edge back so it might mend.

Haraur moved outside the shelter of the bridge to stand guard; she could sleep later, trading shifts with Criaor as need arose.

The moon was wreathed with trailing clouds.

"Haiirao, First One, eldest brother, do you see us now?" Haraur whispered. "Aren't we yours to aid? Send us help." She glanced at Rrua, who was still exhausted from the hard swim before the battle, and was lying too still as the small four-legs licked her ear, and at Criaor, who had followed where she'd led despite his doubts. "Aren't we your siblings too, Haiirao?"

Slowly the clouds covered the moon, though its light shone through them, until it slid behind the mountains as the sun rose.

[End of Part the Ninth.]


	10. Chapter 10

_"That night was quiet, under the bridge, but there was lightning above them in the mountain clouds," Pirate Jenny said. She glanced out the window at the rain. "They huddled under the bridge as they had the night before, keeping one another company, keeping one another warm. But in the time just before full light, when Haraur opened her eyes, she could see the water rising under the stone bridge, almost touching Rrua's front paw. And it kept rising."_

 

"Rrua," she said, careful to nudge Rrua in an area that did not hurt. "Rrua, we have to move."

"Whaaaaat iiiiis iiiitt?" Beeta asked.

"The stream's flooding. We have to get her up and out, now."

The four-legs came to their feet in one move, alarmed ears switching back and forth, tails stiff with fright. "Whaaaat weeeee doooooo?" came from Aahtahtaht.

"Let me try," Criaor said, from further into the shadow. He put his nose against Rrua's and sniffed. "Her nose is hot." He looked at Haraur, who nodded, and switched his tail uneasily. "She's not going to like this. C'mon, Haraur." He moved forward and aligned himself with Rrua, nodding to Haraur to do the same on the other side. Together they crouched and put their shoulders under Rrua's shoulders, lifting her, and set their teeth into the scruff of her neck. They couldn't carry her completely -- she would have to help -- but maybe they could at least get her moving enough to keep from drowning.

Haraur was standing with both paws under water before they got her up. She turned her eyes toward the four-legs, who had stood away to give them room, and the little four-legs got behind Rrua and pushed.

Rrua's eyes fluttered open. "Wha--"

"Moooooooove," Beeta said from behind her. "Naaaoooooooowwwwwww."

Criaor let go of Rrua's scruff; it was too hard to talk. "Just a little further, come on. You can do it. Just a little further." He kept on like this, soft noise in her ear, while the four-legs pushed and Haraur lifted enough of her weight from the other side to make it easier to keep her on her feet. "Up, up, just a bit more..." and they reached the crest of the hill and stopped, next to the large rock. It seemed like half a lifetime ago when they'd tucked food into its shadow for one another.

Rrua collapsed, near the rock but not under it; they all pushed until she lay more than half underneath it.

"We need to get her food," Haraur said. "Maybe the fish -- oh, by bright Haiirao's eyelashes--"

At the change in her voice, Criaor turned to look back down into the valley they'd just left.

The small stream under the stone bridge had become a rushing torrent, and the low flat area between there and the other river was completely under water. The far river rippled with rapids, and there was more water coming all the time.

"That should disturb a few fish," Criaor said. He stretched out the kinks in his back from shrugging his shoulder under Rrua and stared at the rising water. "Maybe if I stuck to this side --"

"Don't even think of it," Haraur told him. "You'd be washed away, and if you even came back you'd be as worn down as Rrua is. Look."

The roiling water licked at the supports of the stone bridge.

"Gooood tiiiiiiiiiiiime toooo leeeeeeeeeeeeeave." Beeta blinked long eyelashes and shook her head. "Rrrrrrruuuuuuua siiiiiiick?"

Haraur paced back to Rrua, leaned down and licked her ear. Rrua moved her ear just a little, not enough to count as a flick. "I think so. She needs to be kept warm."

"Yeeeeeeeeeeessssssss." Beeta gazed at them steadily, moving her jaw in a slow chew as if thinking. At length she said, "Yoooooouuuuuu taaaaaake oooooouuuuurrr ffuuuurrr."

"What?"

Aahtahtaht nodded. "Weeeeee haaaaave tooooo looooong fuuuuurrrr. Yoooooouuuu taaaaake sooooome, puuuut byyyyy Rrrrrrruuuuuua." She walked forward to Haraur. "Caaaaaarrreeefuuuullly, pleeeease."

Haraur flexed her claws in her forefoot. Could she manage to slice fur without injuring the four-legs? "I'll try." She hesitated. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Looooonnnngest ooooon baaaaack." Aahtahtaht braced her feet and closed her eyes.

Haraur took a breath. "Maybe if you lay down...." and the four-legs folded down as if to sleep, a compact lump covered in thick fur. Haraur stretched her toes wide on her forepaw and combed through the fur, with as fine a touch as if she were trying to walk through tall grass soundlessly, and the fur lifted between her fingers and came loose in a long clump. "Does that hurt?"

"Nooooo." A little shiver, but that was all.

She retracted her claws, catching the fur in her mouth and dropping it. She had to stand on it to keep it from starting to roll away in the breeze down the mountain.

Beeta made some untranslatable sound, and Aahtahtaht opened her eyes and nodded.

"Let me help," Criaor said. He picked up the fur, carried it to where Rrua lay and tucked it in next to her, where it caught on the raised edges of Rrua's own fur and stayed put. By the time he returned, Haraur had several paws-full of fur held down by her other forefoot, and the little four-legs looked fluffier and less heavy, its remaining fur a claw-length long instead of the length of a forepaw with claws extended. Haraur let Criaor take the fur and moved around Aahtahtaht, carefully pulling away only the longest strands, the ones that were loose and about to fall out. She had to angle her claws to catch only fur, but it was not as hard to do as getting the fur out of her claws afterward.

When Aahtahtaht's loose fur had been trimmed and gathered, Beeta lay down in her place, followed in turn by Paaathi and Maapa. As each four-legs finished donating fur, she went over to push the edges of the loose fur back into place around Rrua, stomping it into place with little feet, and then lying next to her so that she would always know she was not alone.

Haraur licked her paws, and then rubbed her tongue on the bottom of her forepaw to take away the taste of four-legs. She was too hungry. "I'm going over the hill to the pond to get food. I'll bring you back what I can," she said. "Criaor?"

He gazed back at her steadily. "I'm not leaving them alone."

Rrua was surrounded by four-legs pressing the fur closer to her. She moaned a little in her sleep. Her cut ear seemed larger, harder, and they licked it to try to cool the heat in it.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," Haraur said.

She looked back once as she reached the crest of the hill. Criaor lay on the ridge, eyeing the approaching water that filled the valley as if considering how to fight it.

She was too hungry for subtlety, this time. A careless marmot died with one blow from her paw, and was eaten nearly instantly. A ptarmagan that dodged to the right instead of the left lost its head, and made the second half of a fast meal; she left the feathers.

She caught her breath and drank from a stream above the pond, surveying the area. A group of larger four-legs, mare, stallion and two yearling foals, grazed on the other side of the water, shielded from noticing her by the reeds in the water and a few small bushes. One of the foals was straying too far from the others, coming toward her. It was a gift, as if Haiirao had offered it to her, and she was determined to accept. The foal died so quickly it only had time to feel startled, not afraid. She roared at the others, all teeth bared, and they ran, pushing their remaining foal ahead of to keep it from her.

The food did not weigh too much for her to drag across the smooth ground, but it was a steady effort. She pulled it for half the distance, paused to pant briefly and lick up some of the blood -- no reason to let it go to waste -- and was about to resume the trip when she felt the chill of a shadow overtake her and looked back uphill.

There stood the yeti, four times as large as it had been before, blue eyes blinking at her from so far up that her neck hurt, trying to see them. It must have realized this because it crouched so as to look her in the face. It was as if the top of the mountain itself had come down and was a paw's-reach away; she could feel the cold on her muzzle and in her ears.

There was so much to say to him, and too much of it was bad. "The bridge is flooded, and so's the whole valley. We were attacked by wolves, and Rrua is hurt. I'm taking food for my siblings." Then, lest he think all was lost, she added, "The four-legs have stayed with us. They've given their fur to keep Rrua warm, and they helped us get her uphill. It's almost like having more siblings." And finally, in a rush, "I'm so glad you're back."

The yeti nodded slowly and stood. It waited until she had grabbed the food's neck again, and accompanied her back over the hill at her speed.

[End of Part the Tenth.]


End file.
